SITREP 1/22/24: Major Breakthroughs as AFU Defense Collapses in Avdeevka

As soon as Russian troops resumed their attacks after holiday rotations, AFU’s defenses in Avdeevka have begun to seriously collapse.

Russian forces continue to do far better in urban environments where there is cover. In the open steppes of north Avdeevka, they are quite brutally repulsed with some of the worst carnage I’ve seen of the war thus far. But in the conurbanation of the south, they move smoothly forward. Interestingly, a video emerged yesterday of a Russian soldier speaking on just that: the differences between fighting in open fields or in urban environments. While he lists pros and cons of each, he seems to prefer urban for the easier cover. Wagner likewise found this to be true in and around Bakhmut.

Firstly, Ukrainian comms were intercepted in the south of Avdeevka around this Tsar’s Hunt area. The exchanges point to heavy problems, a lot of dead and wounded amongst the AFU, as well as anger and disagreement with the command staff:

Secondly, as Russian forces moved up, several batches of AFU surrendered, seemingly corroborating the disintegration of their lines hinted at in the radio exchanges above. Here, the Russian 80th Regiment troops of the 90th Guards Tank Division take in their haul of POWs in Avdeevka:

Reports seemed to underline the disarray. For instance this one which stated the AFU’s 110th brigade’s commander abandoned his troops at precisely the areas I cover below:

One of the videos above was geolocated thusly at 48.09986770006618, 37.75746924190295:

That is the former ‘air defense base’, which is what it’s still being called for OSINT purposes, and Russia has now fully captured it.

And another video of a Ukrainian drone strike attempt, which showed Russian troops had advanced very deep into the Tsar’s Hunt, was geolocated here 48.11931156678932, 37.75459295246825:

To give an idea of how rapid this sudden collapse might be, here is a map from what it was just days ago. The white circle shows the infamous highway overpass where we’ve seen a lot of tenacious fighting, and where Russian troops previously could not get past:

That being said, it’s not fully known to what extent that new area north of the white circle is actually “captured”. For the past two days, there were Ukrainian reports that ‘special forces’ were seen lurking in their rear lines in that suburban area. So is this merely a case of small groups of behind-the-line forces being spotted there, or have they actually fully captured it? That is not yet fully known.

However, there’s potential that this could domino into a huge collapse of several at-risk cauldrons which are now forming for the AFU. Here’s a more zoomed out map to illustrate:

The green circle is the “air defense base”. The white lines show the active motion. In the topright area you can see Russian troops have moved along Yasinovskaya toward the west, and now along the Tsar’s Hunt nearby. This has created a small cauldron in the center that can potentially be collapsed.

In the south, the entire area north of the missile defense can potentially be collapsed and taken over.

Here’s why that could bring AFU close to losing Avdeevka. An even more zoomed out view:

If the entire area circled in white ends up collapsing, it will bring Russian troops within striking distance of the area circled in red. That area has a lot of tall highrises. If Russian troops embed themselves into the highrises, they will be able to easily see the last remaining MSR (Main Supply Route) which is shown with the red arrow. ATGMs placed in those highrises will finally be able to get full fire-control of the road, which would totally entrap AFU and would require a full retreat from Avdeevka. This time there should be no obstructions in the way the Coke Plant obstructed direct fire-control LOS from the Slag Heap.

And there’s even a report that the retreating AFU have begun setting up a new line of defense at the ‘dispensary’ seen below, which is precisely near the beginning of this highrise area:

It should also be mentioned all the areas being captured behind the Tsar’s Hunt are on high-ground, which is giving another advantage and likely contributing to the snowball effect of AFU’s collapse:

And the Ukrainians bitterly admitted to Russia’s success here in their daily update:

Julian Roepcke was in his histrionic element as he confirmed the advances as well:

Lastly, there are also reports of advances on the eastern side of Avdeevka, but there is not as much confirmation yet:

Last time we spoke of the big Kharkov strike on French mercenaries. France tried to deny it, but oddly enough new information continues to trickle in reportedly confirming many of the names of deceased Frenchmen.

Rumor even has it that a top general’s son was amongst the dead:

Allegedly the son of a brigadier general of the French army was killed by a strike by the Russian Armed Forces at a point of temporary deployment of foreign mercenaries in Kharkov. His partner (also killed) came from a hereditary military dynasty in France. According to rumors, the name of the Frenchman eliminated by a high-precision strike is Sabastien Claude Remy Benard. I'm He served in the RICM (formerly the Moroccan Colonial Infantry Regiment) in the Marine Light Armor unit.

Ria Novosti, one of Russia’s most trustworthy news publications published the names of 13 of the potentially deceased French mercenaries:

DONETSK, January 22-RIA Novosti. A partial list of French mercenaries who were in Kharkiv during the Russian strike on their location was handed over to RIA Novosti by French volunteers from the SOS Donbass organization, who communicate with compatriots in the territories controlled by Kiev.

Click above to see the list. I say “potentially” because the leaker who handed the list over said it’s still being clarified who is alive or dead.

There are further claims that internally France is ‘furious’:

https://en.topwar.ru/234652-francija-v-jarosti-parizh-naznachil-vinovnogo-v-gibeli-francuzskih-naemnikov-v-harkove.html

Information about the temporary deployment point of French mercenaries in Kharkov was leaked to Russian intelligence by unknown persons, which allowed the Russian Armed Forces to launch a precise strike with Iskander tactical missiles. In Paris, Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov is considered guilty of the deaths of the French. This was stated by Ukrainian expert Oleg Soskin, who previously served as an adviser to Leonid Kuchma.

Not to mention this video of another Ukrainian man who confirms the hotel was overflowing with troops:

Following this, Russia has now carried out a new devastating ballistic strike on the HQ of the Ukrainian 110th brigade in Mirnograd:

Up to 40 AFU troops were said to have been eliminated, as reported by several Ukrainian sources including ex-Rada Deputy Ihor Mosiychuk:

This is just another reason why Ukraine’s small cherry-picked videos of a few Russian soldiers’ deaths amount to very little when it comes to the casualty disparity. Russia is regularly hammering their deployment points with strategic weaponry that has no symmetrical equal, wiping out dozens if not hundreds of troops at a time.

In the meantime, Russia gets stronger each day. A new batch of the latest 2S35 Koalitsiya-SV platforms was seen heading to the front, proving these systems are now in mass production as Russian defense officials promised last year:

This is now the world’s most powerful and advanced artillery system. It has a totally new liquid-cooled barrel, and those big square blocks on the front are its own ballistic radar units which record the trajectories of each shot, calculating miniscule deviations from air pressure, wind, atmospherics, etc., and then automatically computing that into the next shot. It makes each subsequent shot more accurate than the last. But of course the biggest difference of all is the new barrel can handle far more powerful powder charges, which vastly increases its range. No one quite knows what it is for regular rounds, presumably 30-40km. But for special RAP rounds it’s reportedly in the 70-80km range, which would allow it to surpass any of the vaunted NATO weapons like the French Caesar, Phz 2000, etc., and more importantly fire from the deep rear where Ukrainian drones can’t reach.

HIMARs, however, can still theoretically reach it with its ~90km range, if a Shark recon drone is allowed to spot the Koalitsiya. However, if the Koalitsiya is at max range, the HIMARs may have to go nearly right up to the frontline, or at least uncomfortably close to within 10-20km, putting itself in range of superior Russian frontline ISR, which I doubt they’d risk doing.

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And speaking of that French Caesar, here’s another one destroyed:

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Last time we spoke on the Bradley vs. T-90M incident. Here’s a full video of that very Bradley commander speaking about the so-called battle:

What’s interesting, is at the 0:35 mark he confirms another Bradley had engaged first but that it “didn’t work out”. I was one of the few pointing out the little-seen second Bradley which most people missed, particularly the UA propagandists. The “didn’t work out” can be read as euphemism for that Bradley possibly being disabled/destroyed by the tank, or at least damaged enough to flee, which is what it appeared to be doing on video.

Funnily enough, even for a propaganda video, at the end they admit: “These American vehicles aren’t designed for our weather.”

But here’s the problem. Ukrainians were gloatingly posting the above video, but would love for you to never see the new one which comes only days later, from today. The very same Bradley commander now looks very glum and says that he engaged a new Russian tank, and that “This time it didn’t work out…” He doesn’t specify but it looks like his Bradley is no longer functional.

I guess the T-90 got its revenge.

I wrote recently about the ways that EU/NATO/US are trying to scaremonger their populations into believing that Russia will attack Europe if Ukraine loses. Now the foreign affairs minister of Lithuania, Gabrielius Landsbergis, says that Ukraine is buying time for all of Europe. His argument is that the Ukrainian war is about nothing more than simply giving Europe time to arm and prepare themselves for Russia. This seems quite the narrative shift for all the ballyhoo about Ukrainian freedoms and democracy and all that:

New Polish PM Donald Tusk also made a stop in Kiev to step up the pressure campaign against Europe:

And the Chairman of the NATO Military Committee Rob Bauer unleashed a crazy bit of scaremongering by hysterically telling civilians they need to have water, radios, and flashlights on hand to survive the coming Russian invasion:

Not to be outdone, DailyMail dropped another propaganda masterpiece. The first one dealt with the Bundeswehr’s “leaked documents” about a Russian invasion of the Suwalki Gap in 2025. Not to be outdone in the propaganda race, they now propose a Russian invasion of Europe in the year 2044:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12983961/Long-range-missiles-strike-civilian-targets-Europe-Baltic-states-invaded-AI-controlled-tanks-rule-battlefield-NATO-warns-Russian-attack-20-years-terrifying-prediction-unfold.html

This is getting so comically cartoony that it’s difficult to imagine these are serious adults.

The “terrifying prediction”, as they call it, says Russian “Ai-controlled robotic tanks” will hit the continent:

It’s all so absurdly tiring that it’s not even worth doing a line level breakdown of their juvenile tabloid gunk fantasy.

And there are reports that Estonia wants to build a gigantic bunker network on Russia’s borders in preparation:

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New polls from Ukraine continue to show Zaluzhny having an increasing lead over Zelensky in the citizens’ support:

Even Poroshenko is again neck and neck with Zelensky.

37.5% of Ukrainians would vote for Zaluzhny instead of Zelensky in the second round of elections, opinion poll “Advanced Legal Initiatives”.

According to the results, the current president of Ukraine would gain only 15.7%.

On this account, there are rumors originating from Ukrainian political analyst Konstantin Bondarenko that Zelensky and Yermak are preparing sweeping changes of the leadership, which would include removing Zaluzhny and replacing him with Kyrylo Budanov. This makes little sense to me for obvious reasons—what experience does young Budanov have in leading an army? But so goes the rumor. If I’m understanding it correctly though, Zaluzhny would be slightly demoted to the position of Secretary of the National Defense Council, replacing Oleksi Danilov:

According to him, in the near future Zelensky and Ermak will make a number of castings (in terms of candidates, we were also confirmed by information from the OP and journalists of the Bankova pool):

Glavkom Valery Zaluzhny will be relocated to the Secretary of the SNBO, instead of A. Danilova (we are talking about this wrote);
✅K. will become the new commander in chief: Budanov;
✅Syrsky may head the General Staff of the Armed Forces;
✅Head of SBU V. Malyuk will be appointed head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs;
✅instead of Malyuk SBU will lead his 1st deputy A. Warehouse (nicknamed « Strangler »);
✅also Zelensky dissatisfied with the Minister of Defense Umerov;
✅ recent negative around D. Kuleba makes it possible for the ambassador to London to move him. Well, A. Reznikov, judging by his decision to engage in active advocacy, until he goes to the UK...

We will observe how the published insider will affect future appointments. But the fact that the behind-the-scenes struggle will intensify and intrigues, and new scandals will break into the media space - we have no doubt 🧩

Meanwhile Legitimny channel believes the current contending network forming up a bloc against Zelensky is the following:

We would add that Zaluzhny + Razumkov + Klitschko + oligarch Akhmetov + Fiala + Pinchuk. Here is the real behind-the-scenes union of the future, where some of the nishtyaks will receive the Fial and its « circle will be forty » with the Tide.

We’ve heard it all before, of course. But I’ve also said that the fate of Avdeevka may be entwined with these events. If Avdeevka falls, it could be used to blame Zaluzhny and precipitate the avalanche of required changes. One rumor even said that Zelensky is deliberately withholding certain help from Avdeevka in order to sabotage it and use that as raison d’etre to boot Zaluzhny.

In a new interview, Zelensky ridiculously claimed that he doesn’t need a 500k man mobilization, and tried to pass that idea entirely off on ‘others’. It’s very clear he’s desperate to absolve himself of any of the most ‘difficult’ decisions which can be construed by society as justifications for his overthrow.

In the meantime, it may prove a moot point anyway because new reports claim the ongoing mobilization continues to do extremely poorly, with no where near enough men being pulled in anywhere, even despite the increased aggression of the TSK commissars.

A few last sundry items:

Russian forces continue to deliver items to troops in the middle of trench assaults:

An interesting video which purports to show a Polish Warmate 3 loitering drone in the hands of AFU attacking a Russian Tor air defense. The Tor can be seen first shooting a missile that appears to miss the drone. Afterwards the drone appears very wobbly, perhaps affected by EW, but what is notable is it seems to have an AI tracking capability that locks onto the AD unit, which goes to show that even Ukraine is now operating auto-tracking assets of this sort:

The result however is inconclusive, and owing to the fact they used a ‘trick’ at the end to zoom in the footage before cutting out in order to give the false impression of a hit, I can only conclude it did not hit and was likely brought down by EW or simply missed—but it’s difficult to know for sure.

Next:

More AFU were captured near Ugledar as well:

There have been a lot of captures the past few days as Russian troops advance nearly everywhere.

Next:

Zelensky admits that without NATO support, Ukraine would only have been able to hold off Russia for “the first few days, weeks, maybe a month.”

I guess that “three days to take Kiev” trope may have been true after all—if it wasn’t for NATO’s support.

Next:

After Zelensky lowered the disability threshold, Ukraine has been receiving some quite unique recruits:

Next:

How men are forced to go shopping in Kiev to avoid mobilization:

Next:

The accuracy of Russia’s 2B9M Vasilek (“Cornflower”) auto-fire mortar against an AFU squad:

Next:

AFU’s head of aerial recon center for Berdiansk-in-exile says Russia is pulling away in drones and EW tech:

Ours traditional electronic warfare means have become ineffective. Russia now surpasses us both in quantity and quality.

— Head of the Berdyansk aerial reconnaissance center

This is corroborated by a new article from Foreign Affairs—the official journal of the CFR, written by none other than ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt:

Some may recall I had written about him before—how he left Google to essentially work for the DoD, to supercharge their technological integration for the 21st century.

He makes a couple big admissions in his piece:

After Russian troops first marched on Kyiv, Ukrainian forces were praised for the technological ingenuity that helped them thwart their more powerful invader. Now, Russia has caught up in the innovation contest and Ukraine is struggling to maintain the flow of military assistance from its external partners. In order to undercut Russia’s advantage in this phase of the war, Ukraine and its allies will need to not just ramp up defense production but also invest in developing and scaling technologies that can counter Russia’s formidable new drones.

The following must have been really hard to swallow:

Next:

Another American soldier sacrifices himself for Zelensky:

Next:

The ‘Madonna of Mariupol’ as she’s being called has now released a video of her support for Putin’s reelection:

Finally:

An update on the ‘deplatformization’ situation. Yesterday, I received another email from Stripe announcing my payments have been suspended, which essentially meant that as of that moment I was effectively deplatformed. The stated reason was they now had to verify my second newsletter.

While that sounded like routine on the surface, the first time they had given me a deadline of roughly two weeks before the account would be ‘frozen’, if I didn’t respond. But for some reason this time, the account was immediately taken off line while they conducted their ‘verification’ or whatever it is they claim to be doing. This was highly abnormal, and I again figured it was game over.

However, I managed to reach some very unhelpful customer service staff and gave them a piece of my mind, which included a vigorous reminder that I make the money in the relationship, not them: they merely siphon off from me. And that I could very easily take my business elsewhere should they continue this unprovoked harassment of my account—particularly given that you the people have spoken, and 96%+ voted last time that you would follow me to another payment processor should the need arise. Thus, my patience with Stripe is not infinite—if they want to conduct a ‘campaign’ against me, I can take my business elsewhere.

But believe it or not, they may not be totally compromised, as it seemed to have worked. Despite being a Sunday, literally within hours of my angry call the “review” on my account was magically completed, and the account was back online—this all despite their initially saying it would require 2-3 days if not more.

While this does not necessarily mean the end of the problems, for now it is a promising development. Also, during this time I had managed to sift through more of Sage Hana’s substack and did find an update to her Stripe saga. If you’ll recall, she was one of the only other actual Substack/Stripe members I could find that had been deplatformed by Stripe, as opposed to users of other platforms. And it turns out, she did get her Stripe re-instated, which is another optimistic development. Maybe they’re not all that bad.

That is why I want to say this last thing: despite my vocal outrage at the Stripe saga, there is no real information yet to justify entirely condemning them. They may very well have been hit with a mass report attack on my account and did their due diligence. If it turns out that everything will be fine from now on, I’ll be first to heap praise on them. We in the ‘heterodox dissident’ community have so few loyal institutional supporters that we’ll gladly credit those few organizations who are brave enough to stand by us. So, Stripe—if you’re reading this, you have a chance here to do the right thing; stay true, don’t succumb to any funny business, and we will make sure your name shines in the annals, if we have anything to say about it.

The fact is, when you look around us presently, you’ll notice the world is drastically shifting. People have had enough and the tide is slowly turning against ‘The Narrative’. I believe that after the watershed year of 2024 ends, the future will bring a huge pendulum swing to the other side, which means any companies still futilely clinging on to yesterday’s narrative will find themselves woefully out of date, and on the wrong side of history.

This moment now is every company’s chance to make the right choice, atone for their past errors of judgment, and realign to the accepted path that will soon again be a new normal. In short: it’s a turning point, and companies who make the difficult but right decision will find themselves rewarded with newfound loyalty, and explosive growth in the coming years. Companies who stick to outmoded ideas based on an ideology of hate and discrimination from a small agitating elite will find themselves swept away by history because in the coming new normal, their tired tactics will be forcefully rejected. People will once again decide with their wallets, and the fools clinging to antiquated propaganda will be left in ruins.

This is your moment to stand with the people and be recognized for it. Companies: do the right thing.

That said, for now: the train continues chugging along.

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